THE AUTOPED 1915-1921

By Scooter Historian JFRED

There were many attempts to build motorscooters in the early days of motoring. Some were pretty successful and some pretty bizarre.

The early motorscooters were clumsy and cumbersome and not very reliable. Owners were often found pushing their scooter back home for tinkering or repairs. While the automobile and motorcycle evolved into reliable and affordable means of transportation the motorscooter remained the play toy of the wealthy and did not become an economical means of personal transportation.

Arthur Hugo Cecil Gibson’s Autoped was among the more successful. It started out as the Marks Motorscooter . Copies were produced under license in Germany by Krupp and in Czechosovakia by CAS. In Great Britian a version was produced by Douglas.

In America it was marketed as the Ever Ready Autoped. The scooter was powered by a 155cc single cylinder engine and weighed in at 96lbs. The construction was unusual in that it was fabricated using stamped sheet metal and steel plates rather than the tubing construction of bicycles and motorcycles.

To operate the scooter, the rider pushed forward on the handlebar to engage the clutch, pull back midway and you are free wheeling. Pull all the way back to engage the front brake. There was no rear brake. Autoped manufactured their own red pneumatic tires. With a price of $100 it was not inexpensive.

The ad artists kind of drew their version of the scooter, the ladies must have been riding into a strong wind, top speed was only 10 mph. The American Ever Ready Autoped was certainly unique with some fairly sophisticated design features.

The Motoped was a less expensive and less successful copy of the Autoped.

The lady in this last photo looks a little nervous and he hasn’t even told her the brake is shoe leather, you drag your foot to stop.

In the next installment we will look at some more first generation motorscooters.


Jfred is mostly into vintage scooters. He enjoys restoring them but no show queens, His 1947 Cushman is an original unrestored scooter and is just like his very first he had at the age of 12. It's slow, not powerful and doesn't handle well but it makes Jfred smile every time he rides it. He moved to Steelville, Missouri when he retired 11 years ago.